


Out of the Dead Land [fic + podfic]

by originally, originally reads (originally)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Audio Format: MP3, Audio Format: Streaming, Awesome Ladies Podfic Anthology, Community: got_exchange, Gen, Podfic & Podficced Works, Podfic Length: 0-10 Minutes, Spoilers for Book 3 - A Storm of Swords, onwards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2015-12-16
Packaged: 2018-05-07 02:19:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5439794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/originally/pseuds/originally, https://archiveofourown.org/users/originally/pseuds/originally%20reads
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is a stranger in the North.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of the Dead Land [fic + podfic]

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EmynIthilien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmynIthilien/gifts).



> Originally posted as part of [GoT Exchange](http://got-exchange.livejournal.com/176563.html) Round 14, for the prompt: 'Get these characters to meet up/interact anytime pre, during, or post canon to talk, revisit old grudges, form an alliance, or anything that seems appropriate for them'.
> 
> One day I will stop titling ASOIAF pieces with lines from Eliot, but today is not that day.
> 
> Update 26/4/17: Podficced by me as part of [Awesome Ladies VII](https://halfamoon.dreamwidth.org/297500.html).

 

  


[Download MP3](http://bessyboo.parakaproductions.com/Podbooks/Awesome%20Ladies%20Podfic%20Anthology%20VII/%5bGame%20of%20Thrones%5d%20Out%20of%20the%20Dead%20Land.mp3) | Duration: 00:08:30

She is a stranger in the North.

In the Riverlands, she holds court, but the North was never hers, not truly.

It fights her now. She presses forward. The snow drifts high around her shins but she doesn’t feel the cold. Perhaps she had felt it, once. She can imagine that she had.

They call her Lady Stoneheart, and they say that she remembers.

It’s a familiar refrain; like the songs of retribution Tom o’ Sevens coaxes from his harp, she’s heard it many times.

They say that she remembers, and it’s not untrue. She remembers red. She remembers screams, and the kiss of a knife. She remembers Frey, and Bolton, and Jaime Lannister. She remembers Robb.

She remembers vengeance. How could she not? It thrums under her skin like the beat of a war drum. She remembers the names of her children, repeats them in her head, _Rickon, Bran, Arya, Sansa, Robb_. A prayer to the god that breathed such spiteful life into her.

They say that it is a mother’s love that drives her, but she remembers love as she remembers the feel of snow: distant, faint, an echo of what might have been. She remembers their names and she burns with anger, but their faces are harder to recall.

Arya Stark. A name whispered by allies or screamed by enemies desperate to earn a mother’s mercy. Arya Stark is to marry the Bastard of Bolton. Arya Stark is in Winterfell.

She presses forward.

Her men press around her, loyal through blood, or fear, or fervour. The red priest left her long ago but some of his disciples remain, following the gift that the Lightning Lord bestowed on her. They shiver, blue-lipped, even around their night fires. They are less use than the hardy northmen who followed her husband and followed her son. They have winter in their bones, and they remember, too.

Eventually, the blizzards ease enough for them to see the plume of smoke that rises over Winterfell, winding its way into the pale sky like a serpent, black and cruel. Someone has beaten them to it. The thought of that twists in her gut, harsh and sickening. She wants to look into Roose Bolton’s cold eyes as he swings from a hempen rope, as the life dims in them and his limbs twitch like a Dornish puppet’s, the same way he looked into Robb’s.

Perhaps he yet lives. The snow drifts high around her knees, and she presses forward.

A man stands at the gate to the winter town, garbed in black from his leather boots to the cloak pulled high around his face. A black brother, down off the Wall—only the men who flank him are not in neat black, and neither are they all men. She hears the rasp of her own shocked exclamation as she takes in the giant lumbering toward them, the wildlings in their bones and savage furs, the woman draped in a familiar red. The fearsome white wolf, almost as tall as a man, its red eyes gleaming.

She remembers six direwolf pups, taken from a dead mother.

Jon Snow’s eyes track her as she approaches. They gleam strangely like the wolf’s in the dim half-light of the snow-laden sky, bright blue where she remembers grey. Ned’s grey. Anger surges in her, lightning quick. How dare this boy live when her sons are dead?

She must react, because from behind her, she hears the scrape of drawn steel. Jon Snow’s ragged army shifts restlessly, hefting their spears, but they hold, looking to him. She raises her hand to still her own men, and meets his stare. His eyes rake over her and she lifts her chin under his scrutiny, as much as she can.

“Lady Catelyn?” he asks, voice edged with curiosity rather than fear or disbelief.

She holds his gaze, defiant, saying nothing.

“She goes by a different name these days,” says Harwin. He steps up beside her, and she hears his sharp intake of breath as realisation hits him. “By the gods. Jon Snow. That beast of yours has grown from when we found him.”

“Much has happened since then, Harwin. I’m glad to see you live.” Snow spares him a glance before turning back to meet her eyes again. “It wasn’t her,” he says. “Arya. They never had her. They thought that any northern girl would do to fool Stark bannermen.” His mouth twists suddenly. “Theon was here. The Boltons used him to convince the rest.”

This time, the rage is a roar in her ears, a thrumming in her blood, a hot, red rush that almost blinds her. She croaks out a question that she means to spit, and Snow’s eyes go to the scars at her throat.

“My lady wants to know if Theon Greyjoy yet lives?” Harwin says.

“He was taken captive by King Stannis,” Snow says, the title slipping easily from his tongue.

She bristles again. Does the boy bend his knee to Stannis Baratheon?

“Beyond that,” he goes on, gesturing toward the smoke still rising in a plume above the castle, “we don’t know.”

“Bolton?” she rasps, and this time he understands her; there’s no mistaking the disgust in the twist of his mouth.

“Dead.”

She makes a sound, a gasping, wordless noise of ire. Some of the wildlings shift restlessly.

“My lord,” says the red priestess, speaking for the first time, and she feels a spark of recognition, a memory of a battlefield and a banner and a peach, a lifetime ago. The priestess’s red eyes linger on the scars, as Jon Snow’s had. “I’m not sure that it is wise to treat with her.”

“Your god did this,” she tries to say. Harwin repeats it, frowning.

Snow stiffens, and lays one hand along his ribs as if they pain him. “It seems your Lord of Light is more powerful than even you knew, Lady Melisandre.”

Melisandre narrows her eyes, and the ruby nestled in the hollow of her throat glints blood red. “You have a purpose, Jon Snow.”

“Yes,” says Jon Snow, “I have a purpose. We have a purpose. We have to find Arya, and we have to find Theon.”

His voice is hard and cold as steel, and for the first time, she feels a flare of kinship with him, with this boy who only ever reminded her of Ned’s betrayal. She has no need to remember that now. His eyes flash blue again. A thrum of satisfaction goes through her. She belongs to the Mother no more, and she will show no mercy.

They call her Lady Stoneheart, but her heart is forged of fire, as his is clasped by ice.

They remember.


End file.
